A TONE-TESTAMENT
BY
LEILA WADDELL

{xxvii} HOMAGE PRELIMINARY

LIFE that is lost in dullard
Dreams of the senses, go!
Life, by the soul fair-coloured,
Thy valiant trumpets blow!
Far from the world where love is lust,
And work is pain, and wealth is dust,
Rise on the wings of love, and soar
To the sun's self, the eternal shore
Where flaming streamers soar and roll,
Angels to guard its secret soul,
The Garden where my love and I
May walk to all eternity.
Who dares to force the fiery gate
May win our world inviolate.
Children whose hearts are passionate;
Maidens whose flesh is fair and fain,
And men whose souls no senses stain,
Come! These mad miles of flame of ours
Are cool as springs and fresh as flowers.
{xxix}
And thou, sole star in my black firmament!
Thou, night that wraps me close, thou, moon that
glimmers.
Chaste, yet embraced, serenest element
Lapping my life as the sea laps a swimmer's;
Thou, by whose strength and purity and love
I leave this land, attain to the above,
Come thou rose-red, break on my soul like dawn
And gild my peaks, and bid their fountains flow
For in thine absence all their life withdrawn
Congealed my being to a sterile snow,
Snow fallen from some accursed star to ban
All the high hope and heritage of man.
Come thou, a gleaming goddess of pure pearl,
Price of mine homage to the great glad god!
Come, saint and satyr praise alike the girl
Who to my whole life put the period
Of all fulfilment, whose prophetic breath
Girds me with life, and garlands me with death.
Come, be thy magic in the rime and rhythm,
Until the sea sways to the tender tune,
And the winds whisper, and the leaves wave with them,
The leaves wherethrough we look upon the moon,
So that men hear me of the world within
Secure from sorrow, sanctified from sin,
{xxx}
The world of stranger deities and loves
Than haunted Ida, or were hidden in
The Cretan bowers, the Elusinian goves,
A world that trembles on thy violin,
Eager to be --- and then the curtain drops
Just as thy music, with my heart's pulse, stops.
Nay! To this world of ours they shall not reach.
My rimes are shadows dancing in the breeze
By moonlight; there is no delight in speech
Such as the silence of our own heart's ease;
But even thy shadow is itself a sun
To the bleak universe of Everyone.
Then open sesame! The fairy cavern
Of gold and gems, strange land of misty truth,
As witches' eyes in a polluted tavern
Glow with the vampire vanity of youth
Stolen from maids, so let thine own eyes shine
In this fantastic mystery of thine!
Thine eyes are love and truth and loyalty;
Thine eyes are mystery unveiled to one.
Let them ray forth incarnate deity
Fit to assoil the eclipse-attainted sun!
Let them point still my weather-beaten soul
Infallibly the pathway of the pole!

ALEISTER CROWLEY.

{xxxi}

{Illustration facing page xxxiii described:

This is a dark gray-brown colotype of Leila Waddell, rectangular in shape and done on
the left page, long top to the left edge of the book. The background is a uniform black.
The image is apportioned with Leila's head and upper body occupying the left half of the
picture, entire right profile. She gazes directly to the right, chin supported by left
fist, back of hand to right and forearm vertically down. The left elbow is not visible,
being behind the right elbow and forearm. The right forearm extends out along a low table
occupying the foreground of the right half of the image, elbow on table and forearm
slightly raised. The right hand is loosely closed against a round vertical dish just below
center of the dish. This dish is vertical and resting on its lower rim on the table in the
plane of the photo. It is ornamented in volute double spiral circular patterns reminiscent
of a Yin-Yang symbol, an outer ring of about 24 inside the rim of the disk, then an inner
annular rib, next inside slightly larger volutes in an open circle of 14, inside another
open circle of six volutes (hand covers most of lower three) and a single volute in the
center. Leila's forefinger has a ring of knobby and complex appearance.

She her hair is quite long and thick, covering all strategic points not obscured by the
posture and arms. It is long, straight and hangs smoothly down from the head without
evident styling. A cascade of it falls over the right shoulder toward the front, passing
to front over the elbow and before the forearm. Another substantial lock falls directly
down to the front. The hair appears to be all brushed to the right and front in part.

Her expression is fixed and melancholic, lips closed and eyes slightly sad.}